Cho had been shot.
Cho- solid, steady, unmutable Cho- grimaced and staggered back against the wall behind him, clutching at his side when the bullet hit him. He slid down the wall with his hand pressed to his ribs, his face ashen. A fine sheen of sweat broke out over his forehead, and he toppled over like a rag doll, boneless. Lisbon caught him as he fell, and Rigsby shot the perpetrator point blank between the eyes, his expression like stone.
Cho had been shot, and it was Jane's fault.
Jane had found a lead on the Red John case. Naturally, he had devised a clever scheme to follow up on it. Lisbon, however, proved surprisingly stubborn about agreeing to help.
"An abandoned warehouse?" she had said incredulously when he told her the plan. "No way, Jane. It's not a good idea. Do you have any idea how exposed that leaves us if something goes wrong?"
"Nonsense. Everything will be fine."
"Maybe if we had a SWAT team to back us up," she said doubtfully.
"No SWAT," Jane said quickly. "They're too noisy and we don't know which of them we can trust."
"It's SWAT. Do you know how extensive the background checks they do on those guys are?"
"About as extensive as the ones they do on FBI agents, I imagine," Jane said. "And O'Laughlin still got through, remember?"
She sighed. "I take your point."
"So you'll help?"
"No. I still don't like it, Jane. It's too risky."
"You always say that, and you always go along in the end," Jane said dismissively.
"I mean it, Jane. I'm not going to be part of this. And I don't want you asking the team to help you, either. Lord knows I've learned by this point that there's nothing I can do to prevent you from doing exactly as you please, so if you want to risk your own damn neck, fine, but I don't want you dragging them into this."
Jane hadn't listened. Lisbon was intractable, however, and he'd been unable to change her mind about the whole thing. Therefore, he waited until she was stuck in a meeting with Bertram and approached the team behind her back.
Grace was the first to agree. O'Laughlin's death had changed her. She was harder now, angrier. She was more inclined to give into her latent reckless streak now that she had a personal grudge against Red John.
Once he had Grace on board, Rigsby soon followed. He was motivated in equal parts by the desire to protect Van Pelt and to impress her, so he practically volunteered for the task once he found out she'd agreed to be part of the plan.
Cho was less easily persuaded. When Jane approached him, Cho gave him a measuring look. "What'd the boss say?"
"Eh," Jane said evasively. "What Lisbon doesn't know can't hurt her."
"You're lying," Cho said, unimpressed. "You already asked her and she said no, didn't she?"
Jane considered lying, but decided there really was no point. Cho could be tiresomely perceptive sometimes. "That is a reasonable synopsis of the conversation, yes."
"Hm."
"That's a 'no,' then?" Jane prompted.
Cho sighed. "No, I'll come. You're going to do it anyway, and you'll need someone to protect your civilian ass."
So Cho had come along and he had been shot for his trouble.
Lisbon had arrived just before it happened.
"How'd you know where we were?" Van Pelt asked her when she showed up.
Lisbon rolled her eyes. "I got back from my meeting with Bertram and the bullpen was empty. It didn't exactly take a genius to figure out Jane convinced you three idiots to go along with his hare-brained scheme. Which you're all in trouble for, by the way," she added, looking severely at each of her agents in turn. They wilted under her stern gaze and shifted uncomfortably. "We will have words about this later."
She turned to Jane. "For the record, when this absolutely terrible plan goes wrong, I'm blaming you," she informed him.
He grinned at her. "Duly noted."
She nodded curtly, and then proceeded to organize the team to maximum effect.
Five minutes later, Cho was on the ground.
Lisbon caught him before he hit the ground. She held him in her arms and pressed her hands over the wound to staunch the bleeding. She ordered Rigsby to call the paramedics. Her voice was calm and strong but her face was paler than Jane had ever seen it. She sent Grace to secure the area. Jane stood there uselessly, staring in horror at Cho propped up against Lisbon, her arms wrapped around him from behind and blood welling up between the fingers of her small white hands where they were pressed against his ribs.
She murmured soft, soothing words in his ear. "Always the drama queen, huh, Kimball?" she said with an almost convincing smile. "Don't think I don't know you're making a big fuss over that little scratch just for the attention."
He said something then, a name, but Jane didn't quite catch it. Lisbon's arms tightened around him. "You're not there, Cho. You're here in Sacramento, with us. With the team. The medics will be here soon, and they're going to help you. We're right here, Cho. You're not alone."
Jane watched this scene, horrified that he had no idea what place Lisbon was trying to convince Cho he was not in, and disconcerted that she knew this part of Cho that he did not.
She rode in the ambulance with him when the paramedics arrived, with the rest of the team following.
When Jane caught up with her, she was standing outside the window of the operating room, watching as they prepped Cho for surgery.
"How is he?" he asked.
"He has a collapsed lung and a severed pulmonary artery," Lisbon said, sounding weary.
"But he's going to be okay, right?" Jane said anxiously.
She turned to look at him. "I don't know, Jane. We won't know anything until he comes out of surgery."
Jane took in the sight of her, her blouse dark with bloodstains. He felt nauseous, and fought against the bile rising in his throat. If it had been her—
"Maybe you should get cleaned up," he said, his voice straining to be neutral.
She brushed him off. "It's fine, Jane."
He swallowed convulsively. "Please? I—I can't stand seeing you covered in blood."
She looked down at herself and then sighed. "Yeah, all right. I'll ask if there's a shower I can use. Maybe one of the nurses can lend me some scrubs."
When she entered the room where Jane, Rigsby, and Van Pelt were waiting, she looked tiny in the borrowed scrubs. The green color set her eyes off nicely, though, Jane reflected, acutely aware that this was hardly an appropriate moment to be thinking about the many lovely attributes of Teresa Lisbon. Since the alternative was dwelling on how his ill-advised plan had gotten Cho shot, however, he permitted his eyes to rest on Lisbon and his mind to wander.
He amused himself for a few moments thinking about what Lisbon might have been, if her life had gone differently. If her mother had never died. If her father had never hit her or her brothers. If she hadn't had the crushing responsibility of raising three younger brothers thrust upon her at the age of twelve. If her mother, who had been a nurse, had encouraged her to go into the medical profession instead of becoming a cop.
Lisbon would have been an excellent doctor, Jane mused. She had that natural air of authority about her, and he could easily imagine her barking orders to medical staff to ensure her patients received the best possible care. That caring, compassionate side of her that he primarily saw when she was offering her sympathies to bereaved relatives of homicide victims would be exercised more frequently as she offered support and encouragement to her patients and their loved ones. He was certain that Dr. Teresa Lisbon would have had a wonderful bedside manner.
He met her eyes and inclined his head towards the empty seat between him and Grace in an unspoken invitation.
She came over and sat down, touching him briefly on the shoulder in acknowledgment, and then turned to say something to Grace and Rigsby, who were sitting next to each other. Grace was leaning her head on Rigsby's shoulder and they were holding hands. Truthfully, Jane felt rather envious of them. But it wasn't until Van Pelt reached out and grasped Lisbon's hand in her other hand that Jane felt brave enough to reach for Lisbon's free hand with his own.
She didn't say anything—she was still talking to Grace—but she laced her fingers through his, her hand soft and warm. The four of them sat, linked by their joined hands, and waited.
